


Leafing Out, Laughing

by Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Frottage, Minor Violence, Monster horror, Multifandom Horror Exchange Treat, Oral Sex, Science Fiction Horror, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/pseuds/Cousin%20Shelley
Summary: Commander Minkowski is too wrapped up in grief and guilt and not focused enough on getting them back to earth. Captain Lovelace tries to help.
Relationships: Isabel Lovelace/Renée Minkowski
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Leafing Out, Laughing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plutonianshores](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutonianshores/gifts).



Still no answer. Over a hundred days of distress calls, and how many ignored messages before that? 

Commander Renée Minkowski sent another distress call, then stared down at the instrument panel. Doug Eiffel’s face flashed in her mind. His sarcastic, lazy, smug, stupid face that, god dammit all, she missed so much. 

In the end, he’d been brave, and she tried not to think about how he must have been terrified once he was out of range and understood there’d be no coming back, no surviving beyond how much food, water and oxygen was left on board.

At least that would have run out long ago, and any suffering he’d endured was over. Her throat tightened. She’d never really cried for him. Mostly she’d been numb, and responsible, and exhausted. But as long as one member of the Hephaestus’ crew was still alive, she couldn’t stop trying. She couldn't fail them . . . the way she had Doug Eiffel. Before she died, maybe in those final moments, she’d weep for him, and for all of them. Not today.

“Anything?” Captain Lovelace floated behind Minkowski’s shoulder. She repeated her question three times and finally said, “Minkowski!” before Renée realized the words were directed at her. 

“No. Same as always.”

Lovelace grunted softly. “They’re never going to answer. We die, their problem’s solved.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me. What could Goddard possibly gain by letting us die here?”

“No loose ends.”

“Loose ends of what? I don’t even understand what they’re trying to--”

“Commander?” Hera’s voice interrupted.

“Yes, Hera?”

“You wanted me to report anything out of the ordinary, and I’m not really sure if this qualifies, but--”

“For god’s sake,” Lovelace cut in. “What the hell is it?”

Renée sighed and said, “Hera, what’s out of the ordinary?” before those two could get into another argument. 

“Dr. Hilbert . . . has been giggling for fifteen minutes.”

Renée and Lovelace exchanged a look. “Come again, Hera?” Renée asked. 

“He’s sitting in his room alone, staring at the wall, laughing softly. Continually. For fifteen minutes.”

Lovelace snorted. “The bastard finally lost his mind. Good. Fuck him.”

“Thank you, Hera. Let me know if anything changes, especially if he seems . . . a danger to himself?”

“Do let us know that,” Lovelace said, “so I can set up a chair to watch and cheer him on.”

“Just keep me posted,” Renée said.

“Yes, Commander,” Hera said, and though she didn’t have a mouth to speak with, it was easy to imagine her saying it through clenched jaws and closed teeth. 

Lovelace floated around so she was next to where Renée was strapped into her chair rather than behind her. She grasped the shoulder of Renée’s jumpsuit to stay in place. “You actually plan on rescuing him if he tries to hari-kari?”

“Yes, same as I would do for you or . . .” Or Eiffel, but that wasn’t an option anymore, was it? She cleared her throat and unstrapped from the chair, a little twitch of her shoulder loosening Lovelace’s grip. “Or any member of my crew.”

“Which is now just me and the giggling Dr. Evil.”

“And Hera.”

Lovelace shrugged. “If you say so.”

“As Commander, I do say so.” She enjoyed the little twitch of Lovelace’s mouth when she pulled rank, even though she wasn’t entirely sure she had the right. She was the second Commander of Hephaestus, after all, not the first. 

“Hera, can you turn up the lighting? It’s always so damn dark in here,” Lovelace said. Hera didn’t answer, but the room grew brighter. 

Renée had started to hate the dark, too. Maybe it was the fear of the encroaching dark of space they’d be surrounded with if--when--the Hephaestus crumbled around them. 

“He’s gone, you know,” Lovelace said, her voice softer than usual. “Things will be better for you if you accept that.”

Renée’s spine snapped straight. “Don’t.”

“You need to face it, Minkowski. I know your messages say he’s missing and presumed dead, but--”

“I. Said. Don’t.” She pushed forward, bumping into Lovelace and knocking her gently backward. “I’m fully aware of the state of my crew, and I sure as hell don’t need you to inform me of it.”

“Okay, okay,” Lovelace said, her hands up in a rare moment of peacemaking. Renée focused on a dark line at the base of Lovelace’s throat, peeking out from her jumpsuit. Had she always had a tattoo that was barely visible? She’d probably never looked that closely before.

Lovelace continued. “I’m just saying, you need to focus on why you want to get home, not on how guilty you feel about--”

“Shut up.” 

She didn’t want to hear Lovelace say his name anymore. Renée didn’t want to talk about it, and that was that. She wouldn’t. So when Lovelace started in again, Renée punched her in the face.

“Wow,” Lovelace said, rubbing her jaw as momentum carried her across the small room. Hitting someone without gravity didn’t pack nearly the punch it did normally, but it was better than nothing. “That’s a pretty sad right hook.”

“Well, it--”

“I hope you’re not going to blame it on _space_.”

She was, even though she knew much of it was lack of will and a poor set-up. She’d lashed out without much planning, and yeah, it had sucked. She opened her mouth to say something else, closed it, and when Lovelace started to smile, Renée couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of her. It was weak and pathetic, a _how big of a dumbass am I_? kind of laugh, but it still felt pretty good, like letting a little air out of a balloon blown up close to bursting. 

“You’re really an asshole,” she said to Lovelace.

“Takes one to know--”

“Oh, no, no, no. Do not pull that playground bullshit on me. You’ve--”

“Commander, he’s hugging his knees and crying now,” Hera said without waiting for a response. “I would qualify that as something changing, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Hera. Please continue to keep an eye on him.” Maybe the bad doctor’s conscience had started to catch up with him? To Lovelace, she said, “I suppose I should check on Hilbert.”

“To do what?” She waved a hand. “Let the man laugh and cry and wet his pants if he wants. Nothing you’re going to do or say will make a difference.”

And they’d had such a nice little moment. “Right back to being an asshole.”

“I wasn’t trying to insult your effectiveness in general like, _yes_ , I know I have in the past. I really didn’t mean it like that.” Lovelace gently pushed off the wall and took Renée by the shoulders, momentum sending them both slowly toward the other side. “I just meant you can’t give the man the therapy, or the absolution, he probably needs. You should focus on you for a while. Focus on your motivations. Why you want to get off this heap and back to earth where we can . . . all . . . flourish . . ."

Lovelace frowned, then shook her head and squeezed Renée's shoulders. "There has to be something more we can do than send daily distress signals that are ignored. Success, and our survival, starts with clear, specific goals.”

“You are nothing if not persistent.”

“So I’m told.”

Renée would like to see her husband again. She’d like to have fresh gumbo from the Barnacle Bar & Grill that used to be down the street from where she grew up, and listen to the oldies station that played so many of her favorites. She’d like to smell a tomato plant growing in her own garden after a morning rain. She’d like to have some Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream that tasted as good as it did before they were sold and became Benjerry’s Frozen Treats that tasted vaguely like ice cream that someone had peed in. 

More than all those things, Renée wanted revenge for everything she and her crew had suffered on this space station. She wanted to make the people at Goddard hurt the way she and her crew had hurt. They way some were still hurting. 

“I just miss earth,” she said, and turned to aim herself toward the doorway. 

Lovelace grabbed her ankle and pulled. “Liar.”

“Hey, knock it off.” She spun and was caught in Lovelace’s arms, their faces an inch apart.

Lovelace turned them so that she essentially lay on top of Renée. “I want revenge. I want to make them pay. And I want, above all, to survive. I am familiar enough with those desires to recognize them when I see them in your eyes.”

Lovelace leaned down, her lips brushing over Renée’s. “So let’s stop pretending. Let’s help each other. We can get those bastards. We can survive. And we can have other things we need, too.”

Renée pushed her shoulders, but Lovelace held on and clamped their mouths together, their bodies slowly spinning and rising toward the ceiling. 

“I’m not like you,” Renée breathed out, then moaned at the teeth pressing against the side of her throat, the hot tongue leaving a wet trail down to her collarbone. 

“So you keep telling yourself.” Lovelace pressed her palm between Renée’s legs, and she ground down against the touch, the layers of her clothing doing nothing to dampen the sensation. Tension was already building deep inside her, so she clamped her thighs around Lovelace’s hand. 

Too soon Lovelace shifted and moved Renée to straddle her thigh, urging her with hands on her hips that dug in hard enough she’d bruise tomorrow. Renée rolled herself against her leg, bucking like a horse trying to unseat a rider. 

She yanked at the clasp of Lovelace’s low-friction zipper and hauled it down to her crotch, then plunged her hand gracelessly inside to find wet heat waiting for her. She’d never touched anyone but herself this way, and the moment didn’t call for a slow and gentle build like she used to enjoy when she needed a tension release. She slid her fingertips between the slick folds, her thumb finding the perfect spot to tap and flick and urge Lovelace’s hips to move. She let two fingers sink deep inside her, and moaned at how tightly Lovelace clenched around them. 

“Command--”

“Go away, Hera!” they shouted together. Renée didn’t care if Hilbert was lighting himself on fire. Anything that needed her attention could wait a few more seconds. 

She curled herself to press her mouth against Lovelace’s shoulder, bare now with the jumpsuit gaping open, and traced the line of newly discovered tattoo with her tongue, the texture and heat of it surprising but not distracting enough to stop her. Before she could focus on it, her hips and the thrumming of her hand against Lovelace fell into a perfect rhythm. When they reached the ceiling and turned to bump the wall on their way back down, knocking something loose to float away from them, she didn’t care. 

She rocked against Lovelace’s thigh, and when she felt the ripple of tension around her fingers and the tattoo throb under her tongue, she tightened her muscles, bore down, and came with a shout against Lovelace’s warm skin. Her hand trembled, achingly close to a cramp, as Lovelace ground against it in her own release and finally collapsed against her. Renée kissed her shoulder. 

Her body twitched in a delayed burst of pleasure as Lovelace flexed her thigh. 

“How long has it been?” Lovelace asked her. 

“Didn’t keep track,” she mumbled. “Long time.”

The tattoo under her lips pulsed, and Renée realized _that wasn’t right_. It wasn’t a tattoo, though in places it seemed dark as one, but a vein. She stared at it, and the parts of her that had gone delightfully loose and warm froze up again. It wasn’t a vein under Lovelace’s skin. It was a vine.

“Captain Lo--”

“Considering what just happened, you can probably call me Isabel. At least for ten minutes or so?” She smirked and started to zip up her jumpsuit. 

“Wait.” Renée swallowed hard. Lovelace didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong, but all Renée could think about was what Hilbert might have done to her when he was saving her life. She’d left them alone--not completely, because Hera would have been watching, but Hera had never been quite the same after Hilbert had sabotaged her and brought her back. 

Had Hilbert experimented on Lovelace while keeping her alive? Was this something he could have done before, when he was Dr. Selberg? Had he implanted some of his precious Specimen 34 into Lovelace, or had the plant monster done something to her on its own? Hilbert had gleefully talked about its off-the-charts survival instinct. And it had taken _him_ over at least once in an effort to get to them all. 

“What’s wrong?” Lovelace said, mid-zip. 

Maybe like the stress fractures on Hephaestus, this was something to keep to herself for a while. Ask Dr. Hilbert first so she’d know what to say to Lovelace and how to say it. So she'd know how to fix it. But he was currently hugging himself and crying, so would that really help? 

“Isabel . . . what is this?” she asked, her voice shaking as her fingertip traced the thin rope of vine under Lovelace’s skin. 

“Oh, that? It’s nothing for you to be concerned about,”Lovelace said, her voice dropping into a monotone. Before Renée could push away, Lovelace kissed her. It was a deep, penetrating kiss, so much that Renée couldn’t breath for a moment, she thought she might choke, and then her breath came back as Lovelace kissed the corner of her mouth. “Doesn’t hurt. Nothing to worry about at all.” 

Lines from a poem came to her, one she’d read when she was just a teenager. She’d bought a bag of books from a library sale about space flight and astronauts, and in the bottom found an old book of poetry that had obviously been misplaced. But she read it, and liked it, and one of the poems rolled through her mind now about a little boy who wanted to be a tree, and when he’d succeeded he’d _stood rooted, and leafing out, laughing_. It had been lovely how happy he was to have finally achieved his dream, and the poem ended with lines she still remembered all these years later. _His mother went for a bucket of water. His father fetched the ax._

She’d always liked the mother's choice, accepting her son for what he’d become, and hated the stiff and unbending father. Renée wanted to be like the mother. She could learn to live with change, to accept. _Survive._

She swallowed, coughed, and it seemed silly to be so alarmed by a marking like that on Lovelace’s skin. 

Lovelace went to zip again, and Renée stopped her hand. 

“What now?” she said with a little laugh Renée had rarely ever heard from her. 

She stroked Lovelace’s breast, and noted the darker lines there too, pulsing, lengthening, and even as panic tried to bubble up beneath her breastbone, she thought of the mother and the water and was able to stay calm. It wasn’t easy to keep her voice steady, she had to fight the urge to cough, but she managed, “You’re just so . . . lovely.” 

“Don’t go all romantic on me, Minkowski.” Lovelace tilted her head, and after a long moment sank her fingers into Renée’s hair. “Or fuck it. Maybe go ahead and do.” 

Later that night, in Renée’s bunk, the vein on Lovelace’s shoulder split open and a leaf unfurled while Lovelace’s tongue was deep inside her, and the tongue grew and grew, filling her up, vines wrapping around her to pull her tight against Lovelace’s sucking mouth. She screamed when she came, and when Lovelace lay against her, panting, her skin perfectly smooth and unbroken, Renée thought of water and axes and saplings bending in a spring wind so they wouldn't break. 

When Lovelace kissed her breast and yawned, Renée thought she caught a peek of purple flower in her throat and idly wondered how much longer it would be before she bloomed.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem referenced is "Changes" from J.B. Goodenough's collection _Dower Land_ , Cleveland State University Press, 1984.


End file.
